Je suis fatigue...
on Camilla Gore (Rwanda), 07/Feb/2011 17:16, 34 days ago
Feel somewhat tired today. I think it was because I spent a fair few hours in the classroom and I’ve begun to forget what thats like! Love it though really, despite the huge change in context I still feel I’m on familiar ground when I stand up in front of a class, whoever they may be. I’ve come to the conclusion that teaching is teaching anywhere. Sure there are massive differences between teaching five year old British kids and African teens but the basic principle remains the same: keep them focused, keep it real, keep it clear. I managed to teach a couple of lessons I was fairly happy with today and got my first‘flowers’ where students wave their hands in a sign of appreciation, felt very chuffed!The young senior 4 students arrived today. Bless them they look so young and lost. It reminded me of my first day of university where you move somewhere new and leave your family behind. I remember stopping in the motorway services in Birmingham on the way to Nottingham University for the first time and feeling like I didn’t want to get there! These students are a couple of years younger than university age, about sixteen I think. They keep arriving on motos with a mattress and a small bag of stuff. Its a bit of a contrast to the packed car load full of stuff I took with me to uni, most of which I probably didn’t even need. I think this whole experience is going to make me very anti‘stuff’. Back at home I had so much stuff, what was the point of it all? It definitely didn’t make me a happier person. In fact I’m not convinced whether much of it enhanced my life at all. It suffocated me, crowding me out of my house like some big tsunami of clothes and stationery and DVDsand books. And when you have less stuff you have less tidying to do which has got to be a good thing when you have an anti-order anti-tidy anti-straight lines personality such as mine. So there we go, I’ll get off of my soapbox, although I would still do anything for a sink with running drinkablewater...but I’ll have to wait two years for that one!